Simon Harris's Blog, page 12

Julian Assange Answers “What Is The Time Period That Vault 7 Relates To?”

The publication on Tuesday 7th March relates to 2013 to 2016 but Hive one of the key attack system developed by the CIA, which affects various manufacturers, was started more than a decade ago. There is also an interesting conflict between the CIA and the NSA, particularly over budget, which the CIA seemed to winning. This has meant the CIA has been able to develop its own drone fleet and increase hacking capacities and is one of the reasons why it has become less accountable. Assange thinks that meaningful oversight is an illusion.

 

 

Wiki pages

“Year Zero” contains 7818 web pages with 943 attachments from the internal development groupware. The software used for this purpose is called Confluence, a proprietary software from Atlassian. Webpages in this system (like in Wikipedia) have a version history that can provide interesting insights on how a document evolved over time; the 7818 documents include these page histories for 1136 latest versions.

The order of named pages within each level is determined by date (oldest first). Page content is not present if it was originally dynamically created by the Confluence software (as indicated on the re-constructed page).

What time period is covered?

The years 2013 to 2016. The sort order of the pages within each level is determined by date (oldest first).

WikiLeaks has obtained the CIA’s creation/last modification date for each page but these do not yet appear for technical reasons. Usually the date can be discerned or approximated from the content and the page order. If it is critical to know the exact time/date contact WikiLeaks.

What is “Vault 7”

“Vault 7” is a substantial collection of material about CIA activities obtained by WikiLeaks.

When was each part of “Vault 7” obtained?

Part one was obtained recently and covers through 2016. Details on the other parts will be available at the time of publication.

Is each part of “Vault 7” from a different source?

Details on the other parts will be available at the time of publication.

What is the total size of “Vault 7”?

The series is the largest intelligence publication in history.

How did WikiLeaks obtain each part of “Vault 7”?

Sources trust WikiLeaks to not reveal information that might help identify them.

Isn’t WikiLeaks worried that the CIA will act against its staff to stop the series?

No. That would be certainly counter-productive.

Has WikiLeaks already ‘mined’ all the best stories?

No. WikiLeaks has intentionally not written up hundreds of impactful stories to encourage others to find them and so create expertise in the area for subsequent parts in the series. They’re there. Look. Those who demonstrate journalistic excellence may be considered for early access to future parts.

Won’t other journalists find all the best stories before me?

Unlikely. There are very considerably more stories than there are journalists or academics who are in a position to write them.

Julian Assange Answers A Question About Redactions

Wikileaks doesn’t redact unless there are important reasons to do so. In Vault 7 around 78,000 including IP addresses of attack machines, which have been redacted because they need to be investigated.

 

 

Redactions

Names, email addresses and external IP addresses have been redacted in the released pages (70,875 redactions in total) until further analysis is complete.

Over-redaction: Some items may have been redacted that are not employees, contractors, targets or otherwise related to the agency, but are, for example, authors of documentation for otherwise public projects that are used by the agency.
Identity vs. person: the redacted names are replaced by user IDs (numbers) to allow readers to assign multiple pages to a single author. Given the redaction process used a single person may be represented by more than one assigned identifier but no identifier refers to more than one real person.
Archive attachments (zip, tar.gz, …) are replaced with a PDF listing all the file names in the archive. As the archive content is assessed it may be made available; until then the archive is redacted.
Attachments with other binary content are replaced by a hex dump of the content to prevent accidental invocation of binaries that may have been infected with weaponized CIA malware. As the content is assessed it may be made available; until then the content is redacted.
The tens of thousands of routable IP addresses references (including more than 22 thousand within the United States) that correspond to possible targets, CIA covert listening post servers, intermediary and test systems, are redacted for further exclusive investigation.
Binary files of non-public origin are only available as dumps to prevent accidental invocation of CIA malware infected binaries.

 

Julian Assange Answers “How Do These Practices By The CIA Impact On Members Of The General Public? (Android Phones, iPhones, Samsung TVs etc.)”

People often ask whether as members of the general public, they should be worried about the activities of the CIA but with increased automation interest in you might not need to be all that high. The CIA was ordered to obtain every French contract valued at over $200 million dollars and has also attacked French political parties so it might just be knowing someone who knows someone who they are interested in.

 



 

How the CIA dramatically increased proliferation risks

In what is surely one of the most astounding intelligence own goals in living memory, the CIA structured its classification regime such that for the most market valuable part of “Vault 7” — the CIA’s weaponized malware (implants + zero days), Listening Posts (LP), and Command and Control (C2) systems — the agency has little legal recourse.

The CIA made these systems unclassified.

Why the CIA chose to make its cyberarsenal unclassified reveals how concepts developed for military use do not easily crossover to the ‘battlefield’ of cyber ‘war’.

To attack its targets, the CIA usually requires that its implants communicate with their control programs over the internet. If CIA implants, Command & Control and Listening Post software were classified, then CIA officers could be prosecuted or dismissed for violating rules that prohibit placing classified information onto the Internet. Consequently the CIA has secretly made most of its cyber spying/war code unclassified. The U.S. government is not able to assert copyright either, due to restrictions in the U.S. Constitution. This means that cyber ‘arms’ manufactures and computer hackers can freely “pirate” these ‘weapons’ if they are obtained. The CIA has primarily had to rely on obfuscation to protect its malware secrets.

Conventional weapons such as missiles may be fired at the enemy (i.e into an unsecured area). Proximity to or impact with the target detonates the ordnance including its classified parts. Hence military personnel do not violate classification rules by firing ordnance with classified parts. Ordnance will likely explode. If it does not, that is not the operator’s intent.

Over the last decade U.S. hacking operations have been increasingly dressed up in military jargon to tap into Department of Defense funding streams. For instance, attempted “malware injections” (commercial jargon) or “implant drops” (NSA jargon) are being called “fires” as if a weapon was being fired. However the analogy is questionable.

Unlike bullets, bombs or missiles, most CIA malware is designed to live for days or even years after it has reached its ‘target’. CIA malware does not “explode on impact” but rather permanently infests its target. In order to infect target’s device, copies of the malware must be placed on the target’s devices, giving physical possession of the malware to the target. To exfiltrate data back to the CIA or to await further instructions the malware must communicate with CIA Command & Control (C2) systems placed on internet connected servers. But such servers are typically not approved to hold classified information, so CIA command and control systems are also made unclassified.

A successful ‘attack’ on a target’s computer system is more like a series of complex stock maneuvers in a hostile take-over bid or the careful planting of rumors in order to gain control over an organization’s leadership rather than the firing of a weapons system. If there is a military analogy to be made, the infestation of a target is perhaps akin to the execution of a whole series of military maneuvers against the target’s territory including observation, infiltration, occupation and exploitation.

Julian Assange Answers “Is There Proof That The CIA Is Involved In Internal Struggle Leaking As Opposed To Something Else?”

It’s an unusual time in the United States to see an intelligence agency so involved in domestic politics. Obviously, if the government really is a danger to national security then this would be legitimate. However, we haven’t got an opinion on the Trump Administration yet.

Vault 7 also has implications for journalists being able to protect their sources because the CIA is now attacking the end points before encryption takes place through its Automated Input Branch.

 

‘Cyberwar’ programs are a serious proliferation risk

Cyber ‘weapons’ are not possible to keep under effective control.

While nuclear proliferation has been restrained by the enormous costs and visible infrastructure involved in assembling enough fissile material to produce a critical nuclear mass, cyber ‘weapons’, once developed, are very hard to retain.

Cyber ‘weapons’ are in fact just computer programs which can be pirated like any other. Since they are entirely comprised of information they can be copied quickly with no marginal cost.

Securing such ‘weapons’ is particularly difficult since the same people who develop and use them have the skills to exfiltrate copies without leaving traces — sometimes by using the very same ‘weapons’ against the organizations that contain them. There are substantial price incentives for government hackers and consultants to obtain copies since there is a global “vulnerability market” that will pay hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for copies of such ‘weapons’. Similarly, contractors and companies who obtain such ‘weapons’ sometimes use them for their own purposes, obtaining advantage over their competitors in selling ‘hacking’ services.

Over the last three years the United States intelligence sector, which consists of government agencies such as the CIA and NSA and their contractors, such as Booz Allan Hamilton, has been subject to unprecedented series of data exfiltrations by its own workers.

A number of intelligence community members not yet publicly named have been arrested or subject to federal criminal investigations in separate incidents.

Most visibly, on February 8, 2017 a U.S. federal grand jury indicted Harold T. Martin III with 20 counts of mishandling classified information. The Department of Justice alleged that it seized some 50,000 gigabytes of information from Harold T. Martin III that he had obtained from classified programs at NSA and CIA, including the source code for numerous hacking tools.

Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by peer states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

 

Julian Assange Answers “As Long As These Are Overseas Targets Isn’t Legal For The CIA To Do This?”

The CIA has a history of behaving badly overseas, for example when it hacked the French Presidential Elections in 2012, and also at home in the United States. For example, in 2014, it hacked a congressional investigation into CIA torture because it feared that the investigation was a threat to itself.

 

CIA ‘hoarded’ vulnerabilities (“zero days”)

In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA, the U.S. technology industry secured a commitment from the Obama administration that the executive would disclose on an ongoing basis — rather than hoard — serious vulnerabilities, exploits, bugs or “zero days” to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers.

Serious vulnerabilities not disclosed to the manufacturers places huge swathes of the population and critical infrastructure at risk to foreign intelligence or cyber criminals who independently discover or hear rumors of the vulnerability. If the CIA can discover such vulnerabilities so can others.

The U.S. government’s commitment to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process came after significant lobbying by US technology companies, who risk losing their share of the global market over real and perceived hidden vulnerabilities. The government stated that it would disclose all pervasive vulnerabilities discovered after 2010 on an ongoing basis.

“Year Zero” documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration’s commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA’s cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.

As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in “Year Zero” is able to penetrate, infest and control both the Android phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts. The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities (“zero days”) possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.

The same vulnerabilities exist for the population at large, including the U.S. Cabinet, Congress, top CEOs, system administrators, security officers and engineers. By hiding these security flaws from manufacturers like Apple and Google the CIA ensures that it can hack everyone &mdsh; at the expense of leaving everyone hackable.

 

Julian Assange Answers “Does Wikileaks Have An Opinion On The Sort Of Material Released In Vault 7?”

Wikileaks doesn’t normally have an opinion on the material it release but given the security dangers, Vault 7 is a special case.

 

CIA malware targets Windows, OSx, Linux, routers

The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized “zero days”, air gap jumping viruses such as “Hammer Drill” which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ( “Brutal Kangaroo”) and to keep its malware infestations going.

Many of these infection efforts are pulled together by the CIA’s Automated Implant Branch (AIB), which has developed several attack systems for automated infestation and control of CIA malware, such as “Assassin” and “Medusa”.

Attacks against Internet infrastructure and webservers are developed by the CIA’s Network Devices Branch (NDB).

The CIA has developed automated multi-platform malware attack and control systems covering Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and more, such as EDB’s “HIVE” and the related “Cutthroat” and “Swindle” tools, which are described in the examples section below.

Julian Assange Introductory Remarks On Wikileaks Vault 7 Year Zero

In his introductory remarks on Vault 7 Year Zero, Julian Assange mentions that Wikileaks obtained the files from an anonymous source and criticises the CIA for gross incompetence for losing control of such dangerous material such dangerous material, which is almost certainly in the hands of foreign intelligence agencies and cyber mafias. He calls on software companies to help out in solving the problem and also suggests the need for a Geneva Convention to stop the proliferation of cyber weapons.

 

CIA malware targets Windows, OSx, Linux, routers

The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized “zero days”, air gap jumping viruses such as “Hammer Drill” which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ( “Brutal Kangaroo”) and to keep its malware infestations going.

Many of these infection efforts are pulled together by the CIA’s Automated Implant Branch (AIB), which has developed several attack systems for automated infestation and control of CIA malware, such as “Assassin” and “Medusa”.

Attacks against Internet infrastructure and webservers are developed by the CIA’s Network Devices Branch (NDB).

The CIA has developed automated multi-platform malware attack and control systems covering Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and more, such as EDB’s “HIVE” and the related “Cutthroat” and “Swindle” tools, which are described in the examples section below.

Update on Julian Assange’s Vault 7 Press Conference

I have decided to break Julian Assange’s press conference on March 9th 2017 on the subject of Wikileaks Vault 7 Year Zero into separate videos covering Assange’s answers to each of the questions because the repercussions and fallout on this are going to affect virtually every sphere … political, social, cultural, financial, moral etc. I also think Vault 7 may be the hammer we will eventually use to smash globalisation and the New World Order so it’s important to get the information out there.

Wikileaks Press Release 

Press Release

Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.

The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.

Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency’s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA’s hacking capacities.

By the end of 2016, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence(CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware. Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.

In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.

Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor stated that “There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber ‘weapons’. Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons’, which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of “Year Zero” goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.”

Wikileaks has carefully reviewed the “Year Zero” disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while avoiding the distribution of ‘armed’ cyberweapons until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA’s program and how such ‘weapons’ should analyzed, disarmed and published.

Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some identifying information in “Year Zero” for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in “Vault 7” part one (“Year Zero”) already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.

Julian Assange Press Conference Wikileaks Vault 7 Year Zero Part One (Improved Quality)

Julian Assange of Wikileaks gave a press conference via Internet on the subject of Vault 7 Year Zero Part One. His answers were profound and revealing.

Here are the main questions he answered:

Does Wikileaks Have A Position On This Sort Of Material?
As Long As These Are Overseas Targets Isn’t Legal For The CIA To Do This?
Is There Proof That The CIA Is Involved In Internal Struggle Leaking As Opposed To Something Else?
What Are The Implications For Journalists And Their Sources?
How Do These Practices By The CIA Impact On Members Of The General Public? (Android Phones, iPhones, Samsung TVs etc.)
A Question About Redactions
Is The CIA Causing Commercial Damage To Companies?
What Is The Role Of The US Consulate In Frankfurt?
How Do These Publications Shed Light On The Ability Of The CIA To Penetrate High Security Networks Not Connected To The Internet?
Among The List Of Possible Targets Are There Any References To Extremists Or Transnational Criminals etc?
A Question About The Possible Hacking Of President Donald Trump And His Team. Do THese Revelations Shed Any Light On What Is Possible In This Regard?
How Many Parts To The Vault 7 Series?
Why Is Wikileaks Focusing Only On Problems From The United States?

Listen on SoundCloud

 

 

Watch on YouTube

 

Digging Deeper Into Vault 7 Year Zero: Historical Context, Wikileaks Updates and Media Reactions

Reactions to the release of Vault 7 Year Zero have been manifold. Wikileaks encouraged us to look at the broader picture, including the fact that JFK was hellbent on destroying the CIA because it was already out of control. Their Twitter feed pushes us to look at the political, social, cultural and technological implications. Meanwhile the CIA and the Mainstream Media point the finger at Russia and disloyal millennials or try to make out the biggest intelligence leak in history is of only minimal importance.

Listen on SoundCloud

 

 

 

Watch on YouTube

 

 

Links

JFK WikiLeaks Vault 7 Password: ‘I Will Splinter the CIA Into a Thousand Pieces’ [VIDEO]

http://heavy.com/news/2017/03/jfk-wikileaks-vault-7-password-passphrase-youtube-video/

Wikileaks Twitter Feed

https://twitter.com/wikileaks

Vault 7 Files Index

https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/index.html

Hayden: “I’m now pretty close to the position that WikiLeaks is acting as an arm, as an agent, of the Russian federation”

https://twitter.com/colinjones/status/839617816785485829

The CIA won’t admit if the WikiLeaks ‘Vault 7’ dump is authentic, but wants you to be upset anyway

http://mashable.com/2017/03/08/wikileaks-cia-vault7/#iOJGScNvrOq3

Vault 7 CIA leaks: Frankfurt hacking base, ‘Pocket Putin’, spying TVs and more from WikiLeaks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQsLB7iyUMI

‘Am I at risk of being hacked?’ What you need to know about the ‘Vault 7’ documents

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/08/wikileaks-vault-7-cia-documents-hacked-what-you-need-to-know

Former CIA boss blames millennials for leaks — Wikileaks Vault 7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxU8jierhJg&t=1m25s